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Poetry Library Southbank Centre - The Poetry Library housing the Arts Council Collection at Southbank Centre

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Robert Etty

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Hostess

To see her garden past the washhouse end,
she leans across the sofa we brought from
the cottage she forgets how many years
she owned and peers beyond the flowering currants
up the path to where some clematis and
bike frames interweave. She rests here after
lunch, with biscuits and a cup of tea, in time
for when the warmth's reflecting off the wall
between her yard and Mrs Winfarrow's.

To anyone who's passing, it's a garden
like the rest: hedge, ox-eye daisies, holly,
washing line, six types of singing birds
(unless it's starlings, mimicking). Some days
her tea goes cold - the yard's in shade again
before she realises she's dreamt half
of afternoon away. Quite often, now,
it isn't robins and greenfinches that
she points out hopping through laburnum leaves:

Look, pigs are climbing up the trees! There's
dangling masks and a blue man with one tooth!
Boaters today, and hampers, parasols,
and linen splashed with wine. Guests amble off
at sunset and she waves them through the gate.
Now pigeons squat on ridge tiles. Cats appear
and go. We watch her switching sockets in
her kitchen, stirring Bovril, wondering who
had polished all those sparkling spoons and knives.

 

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